“A Force to be Reckoned With”:
The Antinuclear Revolution and
the Reagan Administration, 1980 - 1984
Henry Maar
University of California, Santa Barbara
[email protected]
In a recent presidential address to the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations,
Thomas Schwartz argued for historians to recognize the “ongoing importance of politics in our
work” by acknowledging the impact of traditional domestic politics on American foreign policy.1
Heeding Schwartz’s call, this analysis uses internal documents to reveal the high level of concern
the Reagan White House placed on the Nuclear Freeze movement–the largest movement of
domestic social-protest in the nation’s history. In a short time, it surpassed in size the movement
to end the Vietnam War of the 1960s and early 1970s, and had a wide-reaching effect across
American society. Originating in discussions within the scientific and arms control communities,
the campaign spread into small communities and became an issue of contention within religious
debate. Indeed, with an escalating arms race, in the popular and political culture, nothing short of
the “fate of the Earth” was at stake. The overwhelming fear of nuclear catastrophe and of a
coming apocalypse can be seen in movies and songs throughout the decade. Debates over the
freeze dominated radio and television talk shows, as movie stars and celebrities, prominent
intellectuals and scholars, bishops and reverends, and governors and congressional leaders, lined
up for and against the idea. Both houses of Congress debated the idea of an arms freeze, with the
House of Representatives endorsing it.
Just as the idea of the Freeze was debated in society, so too has the debate over the Freeze
campaign’s effectiveness continued in scholarship. Several scholarly works on the Freeze
movement standout that can essentially be split into two categories: works that argue for an
effective Freeze movement and works that argue against its influence.2 This work departs in
fundamental respects from previous scholarship both for and against the influence of the Freeze.
With regard to sources, the argument and analysis is sustained by extensive use of research
undertaken at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, a source used in only limited respect in
one prior account. This resource illuminates the government’s response to the movement,
showing us the threat and seriousness in which the White House viewed the Freeze movement, as
well as how it sought to defeat and co-opt their momentum.
Despite this powerful and growing movement, a paradox exists: if the Nuclear Freeze
movement was such a powerful force and influence over society during the early 1980s, what
then explains their inability to make the question pivotal to the 1984 election? I will argue that
two factors played a major role in this. First, by growing rapidly, embracing a diverse base, and
moving from grassroots campaigns to working inside the beltway, the Freeze campaign was
undermined by politicians who used the rhetoric and popularity of the Freeze to gain electoral
victories, but watered down and compromised on support for a freeze resolution. Second,
alongside the growth of this movement, the administration fought back and eventually
undermined the movement with the launching of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or “Star
Wars”) in 1983, which allowed the Reagan White House to steal the momentum of the Freeze
campaign. In effect, by becoming a powerful force whose ideas spread across society, the Freeze
campaign did not fail, but became the victim of its own successes.
The Bipartisan Nuclear Arms Buildup and the Emerging Opposition
During the 1970s, the Cold War appeared to be coming to an end, as a period of détente
(or the “lessening of tensions”) guided the United States and the Soviet Union to come to
agreements on arms control treaties such as the Strategic Limitation Talks (SALT) and the AntiBallistic Missile Treaty. Richard Nixon, a strident anti-communist, visited China, opening up
relations between their communist government and that of the United States that would be
formally normalized by President Jimmy Carter. However, by the late 1970s, it all began to
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unravel, as Cold War tensions escalated.
On Christmas Eve 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, producing a rippling
effect across the globe and precipitating a dramatic decline in U.S.-Soviet relations.3 In January
1980, the hands of the doomsday clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved forward
two minutes to read seven minutes to midnight–the closest the hands had been to midnight (a
nuclear holocaust) since 1968.4 Ratification of the SALT II treaty would die in the Senate as
President Carter began to push for the development of the MX missile, or what Ronald Reagan
would later term the “Peacekeeper,” an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) equipped with
ten warheads, each capable of being launched independently at different targets.5
The repercussions of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan were widespread, and came to
affect strategic nuclear planning. Shortly after announcing the return of Selective Service,
President Carter issued a new defense strategy: Presidential Directive 59 (PD-59), enshrining the
idea of “limited nuclear war” into official U.S. nuclear policy.6 The new shift in nuclear policy
was leaked almost immediately, causing a stir in the Soviet Union, with Pravda reporting it as “a
prescription not for preventing a major conflict with Moscow . . . but for stimulating the arms
race, with all its consequences.”7
As relations between the two superpowers deteriorated, and the arms race escalated,
members of the scientific and arms control communities raised significant concerns about the
possibility of nuclear war. Most prominently among these was one Randall Forsberg, an arms
control expert at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). With the arms
race escalating, Forsberg sought to use her skills to reduce the threat of all out war and to scale
back military spending. In 1979, Forsberg founded the Institute for Defense and Disarmament
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Studies (IDDS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As freeze-activist Douglas Waller notes, it was at
IDDS where in April 1980 Forsberg “would turn the arms control debate on its head” with the
founding document of the Freeze campaign: “A Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race–Proposal for
a Mutual U.S.-Soviet Nuclear-Weapon Freeze.”8 The four-page proposal suggested in plain
language that the United States and Soviet Union simply “stop the arms race,” and, instead, adopt
a “mutual freeze on the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons.”9
Forsberg was not the first to propose a “freeze” to the arms race, however. In 1979,
during the Senate deliberations to ratify SALT II, Senator Mark Hatfield introduced an
amendment calling for a “U.S.-Soviet freeze on strategic nuclear weapons deployment.” Activist
organizations, such as the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and the Mobilization
for Survival (Mobe) had put forth freeze proposals, with AFSC calling for a unilateral “freeze”
and Mobe proposing a three year moratorium on both nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
Forsberg’s proposal, however, was bilateral, and called for a halt to production, testing, and
development of nuclear weapons.10
With the escalation of the Cold War, a backlash had begun to emerge in the grassroots,
and the idea to freeze the arms race spread throughout the Northeast, led in part by one Randall
Kehler. A Quaker by religious practice, Keheler’s resume included degrees from both Harvard
and Stanford, but also boasted of a twenty-two month prison sentence for non-cooperation during
his tenure with the War Resisters League. Intrigued by Senator Hatfield’s freeze amendment, in
January 1980 Kehler began organizing a campaign in western Massachusetts to place a
referendum on the ballot in three state senate districts calling for “a mutual nuclear weapons
freeze.” Over the next nine months, Kehler with the aid of activists, collected over 12,000
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signatures to put the issue on the ballot. Though Ronald Reagan won the presidential election,
the referendum passed in thirty of the thirty-three communities in which Reagan was victorious.11
Inflammatory Rhetoric and Radical Policies
Although the “emergence of the freeze concept predated the inauguration of Ronald
Reagan,” as David Cortright writes, “the inflammatory rhetoric and radical policies emanating
from the White House fanned the flames of antinuclear revolt.”12 With the election of Ronald
Reagan, the sharp increase in tensions between the superpowers only increased. At his first press
conference, Reagan suggested the Soviets “reserve unto themselves the right to commit any
crime, to lie, to cheat . . . .”13 Not long thereafter, Secretary of State Alexander Haig condemned
the Soviets for “training, funding, and equipping international terrorists,” although, as
Congressional Quarterly noted, “Haig offered no concrete evidence to support his assertions.”14
As George Shultz, who later succeeded Haig as Secretary of State, wrote in his memoirs,
“Relations between the two superpowers were not simply bad; they were nonexistent.”15
In the first year of the Reagan White House, the arms race would escalate, with the
pursuit of the MX missile, the B-1 bomber, and the Trident II D-5 (a submarine launched
ballistic missile or SLBM), on top of the largest peacetime defense budget in American history.
The bi-partisan Cold War consensus of the 1980s emerged not just around the pursuit of new
weapons technology, but also around the idea of limited and winnable nuclear war–an idea
embraced by members of the Reagan administration and their allies.16
As relations with the Soviet Union further deteriorated, and as members of the Reagan
administration openly suggested that fighting a nuclear war was a possibility, the idea of
“freezing” the arms race gained ground. Activist campaigns began to coalesce around the idea of
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the freeze. The Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) were revived with the help of a
dynamic Australian pediatrician, Helen Caldicott who left medicine to campaign for a freeze to
the arms race.17 In addition to PSR, groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)
also became involved in the campaign to halt the arms race, believing other concerns to be “too
small compared with nuclear war.”18 UCS gave full backing to the freeze initiative, declaring it
“a simple, unadorned and seemingly uncomplicated notion: the United States and the Soviet
Union should agree to a dead halt in all aspects of the nuclear arms race.”19 A wide array of
groups representing professionals of all stripes endorsed the freeze concept .20
Undeterred by a small movement, however, the Reagan administration pressed on
announcing plans for the production of neutron bombs in August 1981. This “neutron bomb”
would make use of enhanced radiation warfare (ERW) technology previously rejected by the
Carter administration. This ERW-based weapon was widely criticized by domestic opponents as
a “Republican Bomb,” while the Soviets mocked it as a “Capitalist bomb.” As John Newhouse
explains, the nicknames derived from the fact that the neutron bomb “was supposed to spare
property, but destroy lives.”21 However, there were differences between the neutron bomb and
other weapons. As Fred Kaplan explained in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the key
difference between a fission bomb and a neutron bomb, lay “in the prompt radiation” which the
neutron bomb enhanced by six times.22 The decision to equip the Lance missile and eight-inch
artillery shells with “nuclear material tritium to make complete enhanced-radiation weapons”23
set off a flurry of antinuclear protests in Europe, while producing a boost to long dormant
antinuclear organizations stateside.
In August 1981, just days after Reagan’s neutron bomb announcement, SANE began
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circulating a letter of protest addressed to Reagan and Weinberger. SANE’s letter was signed by
more than twenty-four different organizations, from environmental groups, peace groups, and
numerous religious denominations.24 In Texas, twelve bishops adopted a statement condemning
the neutron bomb, while in New York, at the annual meeting of the Pugwash group urged a
freeze on nuclear weapons, citing the interruption of the SALT negotiations and the Reagan
administration’s belief in “a fallacy . . . that nuclear war can be won.”25
The Expansion of the Freeze campaign from Grassroots to National
The Reagan administration’s open talk of fighting nuclear war, alongside the pursuit of
newer and deadlier weapons, fanned the flames of dissent globally. In the hearts of millions, fear
of a nuclear holocaust was struck, turning a grassroots campaign into a global phenomenon. In
the United States, the “Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign,” too, would expand from the
grassroots into the mainstream, becoming hotly debated in diverse circles and communities. As
the Los Angeles Times reported on the front page in April 1982, “Over 18 months, the notion of a
bilateral freeze [emerged] as the inspiration for a coast-to-coast grass roots crusade.”26
What accounts for this sudden bullrush of momentum garnered by the Freeze campaign?
The answer it seemed, lay it the policies of Ronald Reagan. As a New York Times editorial
suggested in March1982, during his 1980 campaign, President Reagan had managed to evade the
tag of “nuclear risk-taker.” But by the end of his first year in office, more than half of those
polled saw him as precisely that. Likewise, a Newsweek poll taken during the same week as the
New York Times editorial found a third of those surveyed believed the Reagan administration’s
policies were increasing the chance of a nuclear war. Furthermore, among those surveyed, sixty
percent were in favor of a freeze. Despite tremendous growth, as the Newsweek article indicates,
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a large number–forty-three percent–were still unaware of the Freeze campaign. Though the
administration had announced the beginning of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) in
the fall of 1981, with no progress made, and a perceived image of an administration dragging its
feet on arms control, critics, such as the journalist Strobe Talbott, suggested the true acronym for
Reagan’s arms control proposal was “STALL.”27 In addition to START, the administration
proposed a “zero-option.” Zero-zero was a simple proposal: in turn for the Soviets eliminating
all SS-20 medium range missiles, NATO would not deploy Pershing II and cruise missiles. Most
observers, writes John Lewis Gaddis, viewed both the zero-zero proposal, along with START
(which called for cuts to land based ICBMs in which the Soviets had a numerical advantage) as
efforts to “stalemate arms control rather than as a sincere attempt to achieve the real reductions
the two proposals professed to seek.”28 Thus, with a perception that the administration had no
real interests in slowing down the arms race (let alone halting it), a movement that had begun in
the grassroots had become a political wildfire with room to grow further still.
Between 1980 and 1982, over 100 books relating to “nuclear fear” were published. The
most prominent of these was Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth. In the thirty-seven years
since the birth of the atomic age, as a New York Times review suggested, The Fate of the Earth
managed to do what no other book had been capable of: compel the nation to “confront the
nuclear peril in which we all find ourselves.”29 Originally published in The New Yorker as three
separate essays on the “Fate of the World,” in harrowing detail and riveting prose, Schell detailed
the cataclysmic effects of a nuclear war.30 In assessing how the movement grew in 1982,
sociologists Frances McCrea and Gerald Markle point to two events: Jonathan Schell’s articles in
The New Yorker and Ground Zero Week. Just as Schell’s work was gaining ample media
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attention, the nation underwent “Ground Zero Week.” Ground Zero Week was put together by
Dr. Roger Molander, an expert on nuclear weapons, and former employee in the National
Security Council under the administrations of Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter, who had
participated in the SALT talks. In 1980, Molander created the non-profit “Ground Zero
Organization” which aimed to educate the public about the effects of nuclear warfare. Across the
nation in the week of April 18 - 25, 1982, millions across the country began coming to grips with
the devastating consequences of a continued arms race. In 650 communities, millions listened to
speeches, participated in teach-ins, held candle light vigils, viewed films or read Molander’s
book, Nuclear War: What’s in it for You? (already in its third printing by this time). This new
“nuclear consciousness” was developing across the nation among people and in places not
typically associated with activist causes.
During Ground Zero Week, President Reagan declared his “heart and soul” were in
“sympathy with the people that are talking about the horrors of nuclear war,” but objected to a
freeze on weapons since only he had “all the facts necessary” to lessen the threat of nuclear war.31
While Reagan made public pronouncements to play down the posturing of the administration,
staff had begun collecting campaign information on the Freeze and were following events such as
Ground Zero Week closely–a fact National Security Adviser William Clark wanted to keep secret
from activists. Indeed, in an April 1982 memo, Clark advised that the freeze issue “may be the
most important national security opportunity and challenge of [the Reagan] administration.”32
Another briefing memo prepared for Elizabeth Dole, then director of the White House Office of
Public Liaison, gave detailed background information on Roger Molander and the Ground Zero
organization which shows us how seriously the administration took antinuclear activists. Lozano
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concluded that the Ground Zero group was “a force to be reckoned with,” with the “momentum
of the antinuclear movement . . . clearly working to their advantage.”33
Several other memos further demonstrate the close attention the Reagan administration
paid to the movement, seeking to defeat and co-opt it as it grew in 1982. Likewise, the internal
record reveals how White House allies, such as Phyllis Schlalfy, who viewed the Freeze as “antiAmerican,”34 approached the administration seeking to form an alliance to “lobby against the
nuclear freeze propaganda.”35 In a memo to White House Chief of Staff James Baker dated May
28,1982, David Gergen reported on the creation of a “Public Affairs Group on Nuclear Issues”
chaired by himself and Bud McFarlane that would act as an “anti-freeze” group.36 James Baker’s
assistant James Cicconi argued that if the administration did not adopt the “freeze language” they
would “not succeed in co-opting any significant part of the freeze movement.” By adopting the
“freeze” rhetoric, Cicconi concluded, the administration would “win the propaganda battle.”37
A longer memo dated April 16, 1982 from Red Cavaney to White House Chief of Staff
Michael Deaver warned of the possibilities of summer demonstrations, propelled by “the
grassroots strength of the nuclear freeze issue.” In order to defeat the Freeze campaign, Cavaney
proposed solutions that would minimize their influence since any efforts to “totally neutralize”
the movement would prove “exceedingly difficult.” “In the final analysis,” noted Cavaney, “it
may be best not to deride those who hold the freeze idea so closely, since their beliefs may be
strongly rooted in the morals of the argument.”
Cavaney’s proposed strategy avoided a direct confrontation with the Freeze movement
and, instead, sought to work within the media to “counter the public momentum.” This would be
accomplished through the creation of a “Preparedness Working Group” which would allow the
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administration to “speak to the complex issues involved in the [nuclear freeze] debate.” By
working through the media with allies in think tanks, the administration sought to counter a
movement which Cavaney warned was “rapidly gaining momentum” and “likely to capture the
public debate at the expense of virtually everything other than jobs.” With the success of works
such as The Fate of the Earth, and what was projected to be a very successful Ground Zero
Week, “the freeze issue,” Cavaney continued, would be propelled “into the forefront of
conventional folklore,” thus, making it “the catalyst for a number of summertime
demonstrations.” The issue was “further exacerbated by the moral implications involving the
potential destruction of mankind”–an issue that would help mobilize activist clergy and church
attendees, lending to “the thoughtful moral weight . . . critical to the success of the grassroots
effort.”38 Cavaney’s memo shows us the deep-seated fear of the growing antinuclear movement.
The suggestions formed the strategic basis for the Reagan administration’s response to the
challenge of the Freeze movement. They would not reject the idea that nuclear war was harmful
or that the continued arms race was dangerous. Instead, they sought to convince the public that
by accepting “peace through strength,” the danger of nuclear war would be lessened.
Cavaney’s memo to Deaver warning of summer protests proved prophetic as on June 12,
1982, nearly one million people amassed in New York City’s Central Park in favor of a freeze,
culminating in a rally outside the United Nations second special session on disarmament: the
largest protest rally in the nation’s history. Taking to the microphone to address the attendees,
Randall Forsberg looked out at a massive crowd and announced, “We’ve done it. The nuclear
freeze campaign has mobilized the biggest peacetime peace movement in United States history.”
“Until the arms race stops,” Forsberg told the audience, “we will not go home and be quiet. We
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will go home and organize.”39 Organize the Freeze campaign would, particularly in the religious
communities that Red Cavaney thought so crucial to the grassroots effort.
The Freeze movement and the Debate within Religious Communities
The momentum of the Freeze campaign and the antinuclear movement more broadly was
clearly visible in religious communities during 1982. Within the various Christian churches, a
tenacious debate erupted over the morality of the arms race and whether to endorse a “freeze,”
fueling discussions throughout the early 1980s, rivaling that of the abortion issue. Religious
service advertisements in the New York Times reflected this, with the Cathedral of Saint John the
Divine hosting speakers to discuss the question of “Disarmament–or Nuclear Holocaust?” and
the Universalist advertising for a Sunday service entitled, “The Nuclear Freeze and You.”40
As the political importance of Christian Evangelism grew in the early 1980s, so too did
the issue of freezing the arms race. On one side of the split stood Jerry Falwell and the recently
created “Moral Majority,” a group Reagan embraced during his 1980 campaign. Falwell’s Moral
Majority focused on issues of morality (such as abortion and prayer in school), while espousing
conservative political views. On the other side of the split, the Reverend Billy Graham and more
liberal and moderate evangelicals disassociated themselves with the politics of Falwell and the
Moral Majority, with Graham going so far as to accuse Falwell of “political sermonizing on
‘non-moral issues.’”41 On the nuclear freeze issue, the two took diametrically opposing stands.
By the late 1970s, Reverend Graham had become a forceful opponent of the escalating
arms race. Within a week of Reagan’s swearing-in ceremony, Reverend Graham was inducted to
the National Religious Broadcasters’ Hall of Fame where he spoke to the audience about both the
dangers of the arms race. Despite his friendship and past spiritual influence over President
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Reagan, Graham stood on opposite sides with Reagan over the freeze debate. Graham spoke
frequently on behalf of the Freeze campaign and, in June 1982, visited Moscow for a conference
on disarmament–a trip that became highly controversial within the evangelical community.
During his visit to Moscow, Graham spoke to Soviet audiences about the need for
disarmament, but also called for obedience to authority based on scripture. Due to the
“determinedly anti-U.S. tone of the conference and the lauding of Soviet virtues,” many in the
evangelical community came to believe Reverend Graham had been “duped.”42 Several
prominent evangelicals condemned Reverend Graham’s actions. As The Wall Street Journal
reported, “Reverend Edmund W. Robb, president of the largest evangelical group in the United
Methodist Church,” thought it was a “mistake of Rev. Graham to go there and talk about
obedience to civil authority.” The founding editor of Christianity Today, Reverend Carl Henry,
suggested Graham had “made himself vulnerable to being manipulated” by speaking about
obedience to authority in “precisely the place where there is a threat to religious liberty.”
As the Journal article points out, both Reverend Robb and Reverend Henry were active
members of a newly founded organization, the Institute on Religion and Democracy.43 The
Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) was founded in 1981 shortly after the inauguration of
Ronald Reagan. The IRD opposed churches it suggested used funds to advance causes that were
“anti-capitalist, pro-Marxsist,” and those it believed “smacked of revolution.” To no surprise,
then, the IRD was concerned and firmly against evangelicals involved in the Freeze movement.
Thus, Graham’s positions on the arms race and his support for the Freeze campaign garnered him
much criticism from more conservative elements within the evangelical community. But with
other evangelicals following Graham’s lead, it was “certain,” the Wall Street Journal concluded,
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“that soon you will see evangelism fixed atop the banner of the nuclear freeze.”44
Though Reverend Graham supported the Freeze campaign, as Lawrence Wittner writes,
Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority “worked zealously to foster pro-nuclear sentiment.”45
Throughout the 1980s, Falwell was a firm backer of the Reagan administration. In a full-page ad
that ran across several American newspapers in March 1982, Falwell taunted supporters of the
Freeze campaign as “freezeniks,” “ultra libs,” and, “unilateral disarmers” who were after a
“President who wants to build up our military strength.” At the bottom of Falwell’s
advertisement ran a three question “Peace Through Strength Ballot” which asked readers to cast a
vote on three leading questions regarding the arms race and trusting the Soviets.46 In subsequent
interviews, Falwell went so far as to suggest that the defeat of the Freeze campaign was a bigger
issue than both abortion and prayer in school.47
Despite his prominence in society and on television, within the evangelical community,
Falwell was on the fringe of the freeze issue during the 1980s. As a gallop poll showed,
Evangelical Christians favored a nuclear freeze “by better than 3 to 1.”48 With Falwell’s church
losing nearly $7million in contributions in 1982, his antifreeze message appeared to lack a
resonation even within his own community.49 Outside of evangelicals, average readers saw right
through his deceptive advertisement. A slew of readers in the Los Angeles Times wrote letters to
the editor, with one letter denouncing Falwell as “one of the most dishonest plebiscites I have
[ever] seen, slanting each question into a ‘no win’ position.”50
While prominent evangelicals such as Graham and Falwell disagreed publically over the
freeze, ordinary evangelical practitioners tried to make sense of their place in the arms race. In
May 1983, over 2,000 evangelicals attended the “Conference on the Church & Peacemaking in
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the Nuclear Age,” in Pasadena, California, sponsored in part by President Reagan’s own home
parish, the Bel Air Presbyterian Church. Designed as “educational in nature,” the conference
featured a broad array of speakers, from military personnel, to professors of history, philosophy,
and theology, as well as journalists and pastors from a variety of churches.51 Like many other
parishes across the nation, members of the Bel Air Presbyterian were divided over the freeze.
But evangelicals were not the only religious community to become strained over the arms
race and the freeze initiative. The most prominent aspect of the freeze debate in religious circles
arguably took place among Catholics. Like their evangelical counterparts, Catholics, too were
concerned over the escalating arms race. Just as issues over abortion and prayer in school were
hot-button topics for Catholic debate, so too was the escalating arms race. In 1982, the issue of
abortion had been the “chief priority” of American bishops for the past decade. But with the
escalation of the arms race, many had now come to believe that nuclear weapons were either
“equally important” or, in some instances, “the most important [issue] of all” facing the world in
the early 1980s. Prominent Catholic magazines, such as the National Catholic Register objected
to placing the freeze question above the abortion debate. With the Senate narrowly defeating an
anti-abortion measure in 1982, the National Catholic Register lamented the temptation for many
to give up on the abortion question, lamenting, “‘We gave it a good try, but we failed.’”52
The National Catholic Register’s editorial came as a response to the controversial
decision of the Catholic Bishops to endorse a “nuclear freeze.” In November of 1982, at the
annual meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C., 276
Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church debated a pastoral letter pertaining to the escalating arms
race. Though addressed to American Catholics, the letter was intended to contribute to the
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“wider public debate . . . on the dangers and dilemmas of the nuclear age,” denouncing the arms
race as the “greatest curse on the human race . . . a danger, an act of aggression against the poor,
and a folly which does not provide the security it promises.”
The letter went on to make many challenges against the Reagan administration, calling
for “a clear public resistance to the rhetoric of ‘winnable’ nuclear wars,” and repudiating
“unrealistic expectations of ‘surviving nuclear exchanges,” as well as the “strategies of
‘protracted nuclear war.’” The bishops questioned the premises of mutual assured destruction as
not adequate for “a long-term basis for peace,” explaining that nuclear deterrence “should be
used as a step on the way toward progressive disarmament.” However, perhaps in anticipation of
critics, the letter went on to specifically condemn abortion and challenge peace activists who did
not stand with the church on the issue to reconsider it.53
The religious strands of the Freeze movement represented a different challenge to the
Reagan administration. Whereas activists to the left of the political spectrum could be dismissed
publically or ridiculed, members of the Freeze movement who voted for Reagan and made up
part of the governing coalition could not be. Indeed, the administration was led by a devout
Christian and featured several cabinet members who were devout Roman Catholics. Religious
involvement in the Freeze campaign would force the administration to tip-toe a careful line in
trying to convince Freeze supporters to accept “peace through strength.” To counter the
momentum in the churches, the administration would work with conservative allies such as
Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum, who suggested someone in the White House “serve as the
focal point for coordinating efforts against the freeze and . . . disseminate information about the
defense situation,” due to the “many in the church community who are for the Administration's
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stand but have no support.” Additionally, Red Cavaney recommended bishop Hannon to Bud
McFarlane’s anti-freeze policy group since he was “very supportive of the administration.”
As well as working with both conservative allies and dissenting bishops, President
Reagan frequently made appearances in front of religious audiences to dissuade them from
accepting the idea of a “freeze.” In August 1982, in an address to Roman Catholics in Hartford,
Connecticut, Reagan attempted to “seize the peace initiative in Catholic circles,” telling his
Catholic audience that they took “second place to none in the quest for peace through arms
control and agreements,” whereas the ideas put forward by the Freeze movement were “obsolete”
and “sterile.” While Reagan received wide applause for his remarks about anti-abortion
legislation, tax exemption for parents with children in private schools, a constitutional
amendment for prayer in school, and a tightening of obscenity laws, the New York Times reported
that the president received only “mild applause” for support for “the morality of maintaining our
strategic nuclear deterrence.” While outside the Hartford Civic Center antinuclear voices
resonated, inside, President Reagan faired no better when a protester shouted in the middle of his
speech, “No more nuclear weapons! Jobs for the poor!”
In an address at the Annual National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in Orlando,
Florida on March 8, 1983, in President Reagan’s famous evil empire speech, he assaulted the
Freeze campaign, attempting to link support for it with Soviet ambitions. “I would agree to a
freeze,” Reagan told the evangelicals, “if only we could freeze the Soviets' global desires.”
However, freezing the arms race at current levels “would remove any incentive for the Soviets to
negotiate seriously in Geneva” on arms control proposals. By linking support for the Freeze to
the atheistic Soviet Union, and by enlisting evangelicals in their campaign against the Freeze, the
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“evil empire” speech to the NAE was just one of the ways in which the Reagan administration
sought to steal the movement’s power.54
The Freeze movement in Popular Culture
As the Freeze campaign expanded in religious communities, so too did it expand to the
cultural realms, fusing both the political and popular culture of the United States, with the effects
of the movement lingering throughout the decade. From music, to movies, to the musicians and
actors themselves, the ideas spurred on by the Freeze movement were everywhere in the popular
culture of the early 1980s. Indeed, even viewers of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood could not escape
the nuclear question in 1983, when a week long episode entitled “Conflict” featured one
character suspected of making bomb parts, causing another to also build up his stock pile of
bomb parts.55 The Freeze intertwined the popular and political culture in lyrics and album
covers, with artists as diverse as Metallica, REM, and 10,000 Maniacs among others writing
songs evoking the fear of a nuclear war and the dangers of a continued arms race.
While Cold War themes ran throughout popular culture and films in the 1980s, the movie
that evoked the most response and internal discussion from the Reagan White House was not a
box office hit (or bust), but the made-for-TV film, The Day After, which depicted the grim results
of a nuclear war in Lawrence, Kansas–the American heartland. Premiering November 20, 1983
on ABC, it received nearly 100 million viewers, and was one of the top rated television shows in
the nation’s history. While the film made a lasting impression on audiences, the behind-thescenes battle shows us how the administration and its allies sought to control the film’s message.
The project was controversial from the start, costing over $7,000,000 to produce and leaving cast
members with “nukemares.” As Lawrence Wittner notes, “enraged American hawks
-18-
demonstrated outside ABC affiliates,” while commercial advertisers dropped out. Pentagon
officials who had originally planned to cooperate with ABC, reneged after reading the script. In
the final editing phase, bowing to external pressure, ABC cut the film short, leaving out a scene
in which a Pershing II missile heading to Europe becomes the catalyst for the nuclear attack.56
The Reagan administration took particular interest in the film. In an advanced screening,
President Reagan described it in his diary as “powerfully done” and “very effective” leaving him
“greatly depressed.”57 Elsewhere in the administration, a staff memo circulated “ideas for public
affairs strategy” concerning The Day After, listing twenty-six ways in which the administration
could respond to the film. While the administration’s ideas to counter the film were wide and
varied, they did not seek to counter the violent depiction of nuclear war the film entailed or to
dismiss fears, but, once again, emphasized their arms control initiatives as the best way of
preventing such a tragedy. In a memo from David Gergen to Ronald Reagan, Gergen suggested
the question be framed as “How do we prevent a nuclear holocaust?” to which there could only
be one correct answer: “Support [Reagan’s] policies of deterrence and arms reduction.” The
Reagan administration blanketed the radio and TV media, and provided six op-ed pieces in
various papers. After the film aired, the administration used twenty volunteer telephone operators
to take calls and answer questions from the public, while a special rotary hot-line was set up
specifically for “Mid-level specialists at the Department of Defense to answer requests from local
radio and TV talk shows.”58 The discussion following the film would feature Secretary of State
George Shultz in a one-on-one interview where Shultz would, as President Reagan wrote in his
diary, “take it over and say it shows why we must keep on doing what we’re doing.”59
The Reagan administration worked closely with conservative allies in the media to frame
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the discussion surrounding The Day After, including notables such as Pat Buchanan and William
Safire among others. “Outside groups” held numerous activities in relation to the film in the days
following The Day After. Gergen’s memo described how “Citizens for America,” a defense
lobbyist organization, “sent out packets of talking points and position papers in support of the
Administration’s arms control efforts and deterrence strategy to their chairman in each
congressional district where 110 press conferences were held” the morning after the film aired.
Other lobbyist groups, such as High Frontier and the American Security Council (ASC), sought
to fight back against the film, with High Frontier offering a counter film that would appear on “at
least 40 TV stations” and ASC members appearing on talk shows throughout the country to
support the administration’s policies. David Gergen praised the “first rate job” of the
administration and its allies in fighting back during the “renewed debate over nuclear arms.”60
The Nuclear Freeze on the Political Stage
Both on the national level and state level, from 1982 through 1984, the Freeze movement
gained political currency–a fact not lost on the Reagan administration. In a memo to Chief of
Staff James Baker, Elizabeth Dole noted that the Freeze campaign was “rapidly growing among
the American public” and had become “of particular interest to some of our major constituent
groups.” “[B]ecause of the domestic political implications of the issue,” Dole wrote to Baker, “it
seems to me that the various White House liaison and appropriate policy offices should be
involved.”61 The fight over how to best prevent a nuclear holocaust blended into the political
culture from 1982 to 1984. It was in this brief stretch of time where the Freeze campaign had
both its greatest successes and its most harrowing defeats.
In the fall of 1982, nine states held referendums for a nuclear freeze. The most prominent
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battle, mixing both political and popular culture, was in California over proposition 12 (a
California state initiative that called on the United States and Soviet Union to bilaterally freeze
production and deployment of nuclear weapons). As journalist Paul Loeb explains, “Because
[California] was the nation’s largest state, Reagan’s home and known–for good or for ill–as a
bellwether of shifts in national sentiment, Freeze supporters believed the outcome would echo
across the country.”62 The campaign for California Proposition 12 was diverse and can be used
as a prism to view the Freeze movement’s successes and failures.
The campaign for a statewide nuclear freeze initiative began at the grassroots level. In
December 1980, inspired by an article in The Nation describing the Massachusetts freeze
referendums, Jo and Nick Seidita began organizing within the Unitarian Universalist Society, and
set out on campaign which included mailings, phone banking, and visits to organizations and
churches seeking endorsements. By August 1981, Paul Loeb recounts, eighty-four groups were
involved in what became “Californians for a Nuclear Weapons Freeze.”63 Across the state, to
gain the required signatures to put the freeze question on the ballot supporters held “petition
parties,” sold the “Freeze Bar” popsicle for a dollar on state beaches, and, used more traditional
methods such as gathering signatures outside of public venues. With over 750,000 names
collected, the question of a freeze would be put to voters in California, November 1982.64
As diverse as the national Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign was, so too was
California’s coalition. As Nuclear Times, a monthly news magazine dedicated to the antinuclear
movement, noted, supporters of the initiative ranged from feminists to Roman Catholic bishops,
joining “black ministers with corporate lawyers, and Berkeley radicals with both of Ronald
Reagan’s daughters.” Hollywood, too played a part. In “First Steps,” a commercial blending the
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political and popular culture, actors Jack Lemmon and Paul Newman played a game of poker.
As Paul Loeb describes the commercial, the two argue over their poker hands and begin
“splitting off matches from stockpiles in their hands, holding them out to test and threaten,”
paying no attention to the gasoline on the floor. With obvious analogies to nuclear stockpiles,
Paul Newman shouted “I got forty-four, how many you got?” “Thirty-six,” Lemmon answered.
The two struck matches simultaneously filling the screen with flames. Outside of Hollywood, a
variety of luminaries from the scientific community expressed support, as well as politicians such
as California Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr.65
Despite a wide coalition in support, a strong coalition campaigned against it. Labor
organizations, such as the AFL-CIO, declined to endorse the campaign, arguing that SALT II
needed to be ratified before a freeze could be instituted. Whereas Governor Brown supported a
freeze, his Republican opponents, Congressman Barry Goldwater, Jr. and San Diego Mayor Pete
Wilson, both stood against the measure.66 Charlton Heston chided fellow actor Paul Newman,
calling him a “good man and a good actor,” but someone who needed to “check the facts first,”
regarding the freeze.67 Heston also appeared in a “No on 12” TV advertisement “charging that ‘a
freeze wouldn’t be honored by the Soviet Union, couldn’t be verified, (would) hurt our deterrent
ability and would encourage Soviet aggression.”68
The California Campaign for a Nuclear Freeze shows the dilemmas the movement faced
as it sought to expand its message. While the power of Hollywood may have helped the
movement reach a wider audience, it left the grassroots activists resentful. While the actors,
writers, and designers donated their services to the commercials, the California Nuclear Freeze
campaign still spent approximately $2,000,000 on advertisements in favor of Proposition 12. As
-22-
one activist explained to Paul Loeb, by spending such amounts of money on advertisements, the
campaign failed to nurture “the kind of grass-roots networks that can generate 100 letters at a
moment’s notice, or generate twenty people to sit in at a congressman’s office.”69
Further problems were encountered by the top down nature imposed on the campaign by
financier Harold Willens who used his money and influence to bankroll the California Freeze
campaign. However, as Nuclear Times noted in 1982, “Willens mode politics often clashed with
the ideas and style of local activists.” Willens feared the California Nuclear Freeze campaign
would be captive to “a stupid, silly fringe group whose efforts could be contained in a telephone
booth.” Seeking to operate the campaign like a business, Willens made decisions for the
campaign in Los Angeles, then expected everyone else to fall in line–a concept that caused much
consternation among Northern Californian activists.
The battle for a freeze referendum was not just limited to California. Across the nation,
the administration was deeply involved in trying to prevent nine state referendums in support of
the Freeze from passing. In Wisconsin, the Reagan administration sought to pressure the
governor and the other major candidates on the issue with Elizabeth Dole creating a “Wisconsin
Anti Freeze Effort.” The administration sought to counter the campaign by placing phone calls
and writing letters to the governor, sending high level speakers to campaign against the idea, and
working within the media by placing op-eds and appearing on radio and television programs. In
every state, the administration worked closely with an “anti Freeze coalition” to undermine the
Freeze momentum.70
Despite the problems the Freeze campaign encountered, both internally and from the
Reagan administration, the movement succeeded in passing Proposition 12 in California,
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securing an endorsement from the Los Angeles Times.71 Nationally, with more than one-third of
the nation’s electorate voting on the freeze question, the state referendums became “the closet
this nation [had] ever come to a national referendum on the nuclear arms race.”72 The
referendums passed in eight of nine states, with Arizona the lone dissenter. While an issue like
handgun control (Proposition 15) in California was soundly defeated, and Republican Pete
Wilson would win the Senate seat, Proposition 12 won by a four percent margin, fifty-two to
forty-eight percent, showing how the issue could cross party lines.
At the national level, too, the Freeze campaign forged alliances with unlikely supporters,
particularly in the Congress. But the fight in the Congress for a “nuclear freeze” shows one of
the major flaws in the success of the movement. While Congressmen such as Edward J. Markey
and Mark Hatfield were probably sincere in their support for the Freeze movement, when it came
to the actual legislation, many of their colleagues shared the idea of the freeze, but not the
commitment. This was apparent in the legislation from the outset which, David Cortright notes,
“fell far short” of grassroots activists expectations. The final legislation voted on was nonbinding, calling “not for an immediate halt to the arms race,” but for the United States and Soviet
Union to decide for themselves “‘when and how’ to call for an immediate freeze.”73 While this
resolution passed in the House May 5, 1983, it was rejected by Senate in November 1983. The
week following the House’s passage of the Freeze resolution, Congress authorized funding for
the MX missile, proving their allegiance to the freeze concept more rhetorical than meaningful.74
While the Freeze suffered politically from a Congress that offered only tepid support for
their cause, during the debate in the House over the Freeze resolution in March 1983, President
Reagan announced a new initiative that took even Secretary of State George Shultz by surprise.
-24-
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), theoretically, would act as a shield over the United States,
stopping an incoming nuclear assault. Though the idea of shield stopping an incoming attack
would resonate with Reagan’s own antinuclear beliefs, many of the administration’s allies
viewed this as a way of stopping the momentum of the Freeze. Edward Teller wrote to President
Reagan in July 1982 about using the technology not just to stop nuclear weapons, but also as “a
uniquely effective reply to those advocating the dangerous inferiority implied by a ‘nuclear
freeze.’”75 In Conservative Digest, Gregory Fossedal of the Heritage Foundation wrote of a
“secret weapon” under development that would “undercut the freeze crusade,” and make arms
control negotiations “irrelevant” since “it wouldn’t matter what the Soviet Union did with its
arms.” This “High Frontier” program was a satellite-based anti-missile system, which, Fossedal
boasted, “would turn the grass-roots nuclear freeze movement inside out.”76 Thus, the
administration and its allies envisioned SDI as more than just another tool in the Cold War
military arsenal–it was, as Freeze activist Pam Solo suggested, the administration’s way of “[coopting] the movement’s moral and political ground.”77
Concluding Thoughts (or why the Freeze movement was not a failure)
E.P. Thompson once remarked that “most social movements [only] have a life span of
about six years. If they do not make an impact within this ‘window of opportunity,’ they will
have little effect on the larger political structures they hope to transform.”78 The Freeze
movement rose to national prominence in such a short time due to the Reagan administration’s
escalation of the arms race. As the movement moved away from the grassroots and into the
political realm, it began to collapse in on itself. Despite critiques of SDI as “Star Wars,” the
creation of a program which, rhetorically at least, insisted it would eliminate nuclear weapons,
-25-
undermined the cause of the Freeze movement. During the 1984 election, “Freeze Voter ‘84,”
the political lobbying arm of the Freeze campaign, failed to defeat Ronald Reagan. In part, this
failure was linked to the Freeze’s alignment with a Democratic Party that was only lukewarm
about the proposal. While activists supported Jessie Jackson during the primaries, pragmatists
took the middle of the road with Walter Mondale who failed to make arms control a defining
issue of the 1984 election.79 In trying to appeal to everyone and in linking their future with
politicians who could just as easily say they supported the freeze idea, while voting for the MX
missile the following week, the Freeze movement lost its message.
While the Freeze movement may not have defeated Reagan in 1984, their ideas did not
die. In his 1985 inauguration speech, President Reagan proclaimed that the United States did not
just seek to “reduce” the numbers of nuclear weapons in the world, but aimed for “the total
elimination . . . of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.” This was a stunning reversal
from a man who once saw “no useful purpose” in renouncing the first use of nuclear weapons
and believed the difference between an ICBM nuclear warhead and an SLBM was that the latter
could be recalled.80 Indeed, the man who headed an administration that openly talked about
fighting and winning nuclear war was now closer to the ideas of Roger Molander and Helen
Caldicott than T.K. Jones or Richard Perle. What caused this so-called, “Reagan reversal”?
While recent historiography has neglected the Freeze campaign, favoring Reagan’s own
antinuclear views as the basis for policy decisions, this neglects Reagan’s actual role in nuclear
policy and the broader effect of the Freeze movement. As Lou Cannon remarks, “On . . . nuclear
diplomacy, Reagan was content to be a performer rather than a policymaker,” relying on neoconservatives who detested arms control as much as Communism.81 The antinuclear momentum
-26-
forced an administration that dragged its feet on arms control agreements to rethink their
positions or face a continued domestic backlash with possible electoral repercussions.
While SDI may have been the shot from which the Freeze campaign could not recover,
globally, the Soviet Union did the Freeze no favors when in September 1983 they shot down
Korean Airliner 007 after it veered off course, leading to further distrust of the Soviets. With the
KAL 007 incident and the administration’s drumbeat that a freeze would maintain a “balance of
terror,” popular sentiment for a freeze began to wane. With SDI, the Reagan administration
adopted the rhetoric of preventing nuclear war, leaving behind the ideas of fighting and winning
limited nuclear conflicts. By 1984, the tone of Reagan’s speeches had notably changed. Gone
was the language of leaving the “evil empire” in the “ash heap of history,” replaced instead with
language of “compromise” and a poignant tale of Ivan and Anya sharing a room with Jim and
Sally. With no language barrier between them, Reagan questioned whether the two couples
would “debate the differences between their governments? Or would they find themselves
comparing notes about their children and what they did for a living?” Bewildered by the new
Reagan, one staff member wondered, “Who wrote this shit?”82 As Reagan and Gorbachev later
leisurely strolled together and engaged the issue of arms control seriously, the Freeze would
“melt away,”83 as Francis FitzGerald remarks, while scandals like Iran-Contra grabbed headlines.
Though the Freeze campaign lost politically in 1984, when measured by its sway across
society and by the lengths the administration sought to contain the idea and the movement, the
Freeze campaign appears as far from a mirage, and more than just another social movement. It
was, as Roger Molander remarked, a “revolution,”84 a political phenomenon that affected all
aspects of society. It was, indeed, “a force to be reckoned with.”
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Notes
1. Thomas Alan Schwartz, “‘Henry, . . . Winning an Election Is Terribly Important’: Partisan
Politics in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations,” Diplomatic History, Volume 33, Number 2,
April 2009, 173.
2. Works that support an effective Freeze movement include David Meyer, A Winter of
Discontent: The Nuclear Freeze in American Politics (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1990);
David Cortright, Peace Works: The Citizen’s Role in Ending the Cold War (Boulder: Westview
Press, 1993); and Lawrence Wittner, The Struggle Against The Bomb, Vol. 3: Towards Nuclear
Abolition: A History of the Nuclear Disarmament Movement 1971 - Present (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2003). Works arguing against the effectiveness of the Freeze movement include
J. Michael Hogan, The Nuclear Freeze Campaign: Rhetoric and Foreign Policy in the
Telepolitical Age (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1994) and Christian Peterson,
Ronald Reagan and Antinuclear Movements in the United States and Western Europe, 1981 1987 (Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellin Press, 2003). This work fits into the former
category.
3. Robert M. Gates, From The Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and
How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 147.
4. On the doomsday clock moving forward in 1980, see Bernard T. Feld, “The hands move close
to midnight,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 1980, 1 - 3. The hands moved in
1968 in “sad recognition” of the state international affairs had taken since 1962: France and
China becoming nuclear powers, tensions between India and Pakistan, and the United States
escalation of the war in Vietnam. See, Eugene Rabinowitch, “New Year’s Thoughts, 1968,” The
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Volume XXIV, Number 1, January 1968, 2 - 4.
5. John Stoessinger, Nations at Dawn: China, Russia and America, Sixth Edition (New York:
McGraw Hill, [1971] 1994), 252 - 253.
6. Presidential Directive 59, “Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy.”
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pd/pd59.pdf accessed April 16, 2009.
7. Anthony Austin, “Soviet Calls the U.S. Strategy Shift On Nuclear War an ‘Ominous’ Sign,”
New York Times, August 8, 1980.
8. Frances McCrea and Gerald Markle, Minutes to Midnight: Nuclear Weapons Protest in
America (Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, Inc., 1989), 99 - 100. Douglas C.
Waller, Congress and the Nuclear Freeze: An Inside Look at the Politics of a Mass Movement
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987), 21 - 23.
9. Randall Forsberg, “Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race–Proposal for a Mutual U.S.-Soviet
Nuclear-Weapon Freeze,” reprinted in Donna Gregory, ed., The Nuclear Predicament: A
Sourcebook (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 259 - 265.
-28-
10. McCrea/Markle, Minutes to Midnight, 100.
11. Ibid., 101 - 102.
12. Cortright, Peace Works, 248.
13. “The President’s News Conference, January 29, 1981,” The Public Papers of President
Ronald W. Reagan. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/12981b.htm (Accessed 29, May 2009)
14. Alexander Haig quoted in Congressional Quarterly Inc., U.S. Foreign Policy: The Reagan
Imprint (Washington D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1986), 7.
15. George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1993), 4 - 5.
16. See, for example, Philip Lawler of the Heritage Foundation who suggested that a nuclear war
could remain limited to only one or two strikes. Philip Lawler, The Bishops and the Bomb: The
Morality of Nuclear Deterrence (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 1982),12 - 15.
The key work on the Reagan administration’s rhetoric of fighting and winning nuclear wars,
however, remains Robert Scheer, With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush, and Nuclear War (New
York: Random House, 1982).
17. Helen Caldicott, Missile Envy: The Arms Race and Nuclear War (New York: Bantom Books,
[1984] 1986), 1, 4, 6.
18. McCrea/Markle, Minutes to Midnight, 95.
19. Union of Concerned Scientists, Beyond the Freeze: The Road to Nuclear Sanity (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1982), viii - ix.
20. “Thinking About the Unthinkable,” Time, March 29, 1982.
21. John Newhouse, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989),
310.
22. Fred Kaplan, “The Neutron Bomb: What it is, the way it works,” Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, October 1981, Volume 37, Number 8, 6 - 7. Emphasis in original.
23. Leslie H. Gelb, “Reagan Orders Production of 2 Types of Neutron Arms for Stockpiling in
the U.S.,” New York Times, August 9, 1981.
24. Ibid. Milton S. Katz, Ban The Bomb: A History of SANE , The Committee for a Sane Nuclear
Policy, 1957 - 1985 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 147.
-29-
25. “Texas Catholic Bishops Reject the Neutron Bomb,” New York Times, September 13, 1981,
A37. Henry Giniger, “Scientists at Parley Urge Atom Arms Freeze,” New York Times,
September 4, 1981, A3.
26. Robert Shogan, “Nuclear Freeze Movement Emerges as Political Test,” Los Angeles Times,
A1.
27. “Ferocious Mr. Reagan and the Freeze,” New York Times, March 16, 1982, A22. “A New
Outcry Over Nukes,” Newsweek, as found in folder, “Nuclear Freeze (January - June) (1982) [2
of 3],” Series I Subject Files 1981-1983 Box 26 oa6390, Elizabeth H. Dole Files, Ronald Reagan
Library [herein RRPL]. Strobe Talbott, “Time to START, Says Reagan,” Time, May 17, 1982.
28. John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications,
Reconsiderations, Provocations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 121 - 122.
29. Kai Erickson, “A Horror Beyond Comprehension [Review of Jonathan Schell, The Fate of
the Earth],” New York Times, April 11, 1982, BR3.
30. Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1982), 22 - 23.
31. “Reagan Sympathetic to Nuclear Demonstrators,” Los Angeles Times, April 21, 1982, B11.
32. Memo William Clark to Edwin Meese III, James A. Baker III, Michael Deaver, “Nuclear
[Freeze] (1 of 8),” Box 4 oa1529, David Gergen Files, RRPL.
33. Memo, Diana Lozano to Elizabeth H. Dole, “Nuclear Freeze (January - June) (1982) [2 of
3],” Series I Subject Files 1981-1983 Box 26 oa6390, Elizabeth H. Dole Files, RRPL.
34. Phyllis Schlalfy, “Six Fatal Fallacies of the Nuclear Freezers,” Human Events, June 25, 1983,
17.
35. Memo to Red Cavaney, “Nuclear Freeze (January - June) (1982) [2 of 3],” Series I Subject
Files 1981-1983 Box 26 oa6390, Elizabeth H. Dole Files, RRPL. It is not clear on this memo
who sent this to Red Cavaney; however, Cavaney’s handwriting on the bottom reveals that the
administration wanted to take advantage of this relationship “asap” concluding, “we should do
something here.”
36. Memo Bill Triplett to Red Cavaney, “Nuclear Freeze (1),” Series I Box 1 oa7438, William
K.Triplett Files, RRPL.
37. James Cicconi memo on “nuclear freeze/arms control,” in “Nuclear [Freeze] (3 of 8),” Box 4
oa10529, David Gergen Files, RRPL.
38. Memo, Red Cavaney to Michael Deaver, “Nuclear Freeze (January - June) (1982) [2 of 3],”
Series I Subject Files 1981-1983 Box 26 oa6390, Elizabeth H. Dole Files, RRPL.
-30-
39. Robin Herman, “Rally Speakers Decry Cost of Nuclear Arms Race,” New York Times, June
13, 1982.
40. “Classified Ad 1,” New York Times, May 22, 1982, 13.
41. Sue Lindsay, “Television Evangelist Jerry Falwell Dies at 73,” Associated Press, May 15,
2007.
42. David Brand, “Russian Doves,” Wall Street Journal, June 21, 1982, 1.
43. Susanne Garment, “U.S. Evangelicals Begin to Emerge on the Left,” Wall Street Journal,
May 14, 1982, 24.
44. Ibid.
45. Wittner, Toward Nuclear Abolition, 190.
46. “An open letter from Jerry Falwell on the nuclear freeze,” Los Angeles Times, March 28,
1983, E8.
47. “Reagan and Falwell,” St. Petersburg Times, March 16, 1983, 20A.
48. Marjorie Hyer, “Poll Shows Evangelicals Support Nuclear Freeze,” Washington Post, July 8,
1983, A5.
49. “Reagan and Falwell,” St. Petersburg Times, March 16, 1983, 20A.
50. Thomas Roy Pendell, “Jerry Falwell and the Nuclear ‘Freezeniks,’” Los Angeles Times, April
9, 1983, B2.
51. Letter to Morton Blackwell on Conference on the Church and Peacemaking in the Nuclear
Age, “Nuclear Freeze [3 of 10],” Nuclear Freeze C0A 415 Box 3 oa9079, Morton Blackwell
Files, RRPL. John Dart, “Church Conservatives Swamped on Question of Arms Buildup,” Los
Angeles Times, May 28, 1983, B6.
52. James Hitchcock, “A Single Issue,” National Catholic Register, December 5, 1982, as found
in “Nuclear Freeze [3 of 10],” Morton Blackwell Series I Subject Files Box 8 oa9079, Morton
Blackwell Files, RRPL.
53. United States Catholic Conference, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our
Response (Washington: United States Catholic Conference, 1983).
http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/international/TheChallengeofPeace.pdf (Accessed 24 May 2009)
54. Wittner, Towards Nuclear Abolition, 261.
-31-
55. “There Goes The Neighborhood,” Nuclear Times, August/September 1983, Volume 1,
Number 10, 4. Marcia Dunn, “A little war in the neighborhood,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
November 28, 1983, 23.
56. Cortright, Peace Works, 73. Wittner, Towards Nuclear Abolition, 187.
57. Ronald Reagan, The Reagan Diaries, Ed., Douglass Brinkley (New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 2007), 186. That the film left a vivid memory in Ronald Reagan’s mind should be of
no surprise. As Reagan biographer Lou Cannon notes, “Reagan was receptive to the sensory
impressions of films, and he was apt to retain what he saw and heard on the screen.” Lou
Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster,
[1991] 2000), 127.
58. Memo, David Gergen to Ronald Reagan, “ABC’s The Day After 11-20 [1] oa9118,” Media
Relations White House Office of, Karna Small-Stringer Files, RRPL.
59. Reagan, The Reagan Diaries, 199.
60. Memo, Gergen to Reagan, RRPL. Edward Teller to Citizens for America, “ABC’s The Day
After 11-20 [4] oa9118,” Media Relations White House Office of, Karna Small-Stringer Files,
RRPL.
61. Memo, Elizabeth Dole to James Baker, “Nuclear Freeze (July - December) (1982) [1 of 2],”
File Series E, Subject File, 1981-1983, Box 25, oa6390, Elizabeth Dole Files, RRPL.
62. Paul Rogat Loeb, Hope in Hard Times: America’s Peace Movement in the Reagan Era
(Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1987), 71.
63. Ibid., 68 - 69. “Of Millionaires And Militants,” Nuclear Times, 1:1 (October 1982), 13.
64. Loeb, Hope in Hard Times, 69 - 70.
65. Ibid., 70, 72. Cathy Cevoli, “Antinuclear Stars Come Out,” Nuclear Times, 1:8 (June 1983),
27-28. William Endicott, “Brown Backs Nuclear Arms Freeze,” Los Angeles Times, April 17,
1982, A23.
66. “AFL-CIO Says ‘No’ to Nuclear Freeze Plea,” Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1982, E1.
Richard Bergholz, “Wilson Opposes A-Arms Initiative,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1982, B3.
67. Lee Dembart, “Heston, in Political Role, Hits Newman's Pro-Freeze Stance,” Los Angeles
Times, October 15, 1983. Endicott, “Brown Backs Nuclear Arms Freeze,” Los Angeles Times.
68. Lee Dembart, “Foes of Nuclear Freeze Initiative Will Seek Free TV Time for Ads,” Los
Angeles Times, October 19, 1982, A3.
69. Loeb, Hope in Hard Times, 72 - 73, 77.
-32-
70. Elizabeth Dole, handwritten notes, found in “Nuclear Freeze (January - June) (1982) [2 of
3],” Series I, Subject Files, 1981-1983, Box 26 oa6390, Elizabeth H. Dole Files, RRPL.
71. “Nuclear Freeze: Yes on 12,” Los Angeles Times, October 24, 1982, F4. “For Special
Attention,” Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1982, C4.
72. Waller, Congress and the Nuclear Freeze, 163.
73. Cortright, Peace Works, 23 - 25.
74. Randy Kehler, “Doing the Freeze Better,” Nuclear Times, 1:8 (July 1983), 17.
75. Letter Edward Teller to Ronald Reagan, July 23, 1982, folder “Nuclear Freeze,” Box 3,
Edwin Meese files C0A 415, Ronald Reagan Library.
76. Gregory Fossedal quoted in “Spaced Out,” Nuclear Times, October 1982, Volume 1, Number
1, 5.
77. Pam Solo, From Protest to Policy: Beyond the Freeze to Common Security (Cambridge:
Ballinger Publishing Company, 1988), 134.
110. Notes on E.P. Thompson speech quoted from Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein,
“Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and Civil Rights,” Journal of American
History, Volume 75, Issue 3, December 1988, 811.
79. Ronald W. Waters, “The Emergent Mobilization of the Black Community in the Jackson
Campaign for President,” as found in Jesse Jackson’s 1984 Presidential Campaign: Challenge
and Change in American Politics, Lucius J. Barker and Ronald W. Walters, eds. (Chicago:
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